


If the stars are lit, then someone must need them

by Mother_North



Series: Dark Matter [8]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Ambiguity, Complicated Relationships, Dirty Talk, Disturbing?, Hanami, I Don't Even Know, Loss of Innocence, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Mental Anguish, Mother-Son Relationship, Psychology, Sexual Content, Teen Angst, farewell childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 09:21:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16405676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mother_North/pseuds/Mother_North
Summary: Departure of childhood, a farewell to former self.





	If the stars are lit, then someone must need them

**Author's Note:**

> Very vaguely inspired by V. Mayakovsky poem “Listen!” (1914). Text of the poem is translated from Russian by Andrey Kneller and its lines are in italics. 
> 
> Don’t know what to make of it myself yet. The fic is quite dark and perhaps even messy at times. Patched like a crazy quilt or something; ambiguity, angst and a farewell-to-childhood feel. It just came to me that way and I wrote it down, without changing a word, for better or for worse. It is what it is and darker topics or situations are there for artistic reasons only; I don’t censor my creative output. Please read the tags before deciding whether it is worthy to continue reading. All of the below is fiction, nothing more. It doesn’t reflect people mentioned. 
> 
> RPF disclaimer: this is a work of fiction and it is not meant to offend anyone. It is a product of author’s imagination only. All thoughts, actions and emotions described have nothing to do with reality.

**

 _Listen!_  
_if the stars are lit,_  
_then someone must need them, of course?_

 _then someone must want them to be there,_  
_calling those droplets of spittle pearls?_

 

Yuzuru is lying wide awake in his bedroom. The night is closing in on his senses, eyes shut tightly so that the darkness seems even thicker.  Sleepless and alone, slowly torn apart by thoughts swarming in his head. He wished he could simply stop thinking all together at times, mind becoming blank as a pristine sheet of paper. Perhaps, he could start anew then: without constantly looking back, his easily agitated imagination supplying him with never-ending images of the previous evening. Of hands that shouldn’t have touched him, of lips that were whispering dirty praises which he shouldn’t have heard; and first and foremost, his own lack of will to show at least any semblance of resistance, so that guilt wouldn’t be eating him alive now. He turned to his side, facing the wall. There were tiny cracks running over its at first glance unblemished surface. It reminded him of his own perfect exterior, a veneer of stainless porcelain, an embodiment of ideal brother and son. Then why is he feeling so _tainted_ right now? He spread his long, tapered fingers, looking at them absent-mindedly, his eyes accommodating to the darkness but not able to distinguish anything except for their vague contours. He brought them to his nose and inhaled slowly. His cheeks started to glow from shame and a low-key arousal that made him despise himself. Unique scent of his own skin wasn’t the only thing that made his nostrils flare: fingertips still keeping traces of _his_ flavor, of _his_ essence spent in a fit of forbidden pleasure when he let himself be taken in the most primal and basic of ways. _He_ breathed out Yuzuru’s name — broken and desperate at the moment of their shared tortured bliss.

 

Closing eyes didn’t help at all, the images of their intercourse still too vivid and too _wrong_ to get rid of easily. His own mind playing cruel tricks on him, making every sound and color stand out even brighter and more realistically with each following snapshot of the reel turning in his head. He felt himself burning internally, guilt scorching his insides. Why did he enjoy it at all: that greedy mouth and forceful hands, the way _he_ claimed him unapologetically, as if he wouldn’t mind, as if it meant to be that way. Just as simple as the fact that the sun rises in the East, albeit it was everything _but_ simple and natural between them.

 

 _He_ said: “I’ll make you see stars.” And Yuzuru _did_ but not in a way he could have possibly fathomed. Licking his lips he could taste _him_ , the bitterness and the unmistakable thrill of shameful excitement.

 

 _And wheezing,_  
_in the blizzards of midday dust,_  
_he rushes to God,_  
_fearing he’s out of time_  
_and sobbing,_  
_he kisses God’s sinewy hands,_  
_tells Him that it’s important,_  
_pleads to Him that the star must shine!_  
_vowing_  
_that he won’t survive the starless torment!_

 

 _Listless._ His mother asked him why he looked like he had been thrown onto the desolate shore after the storm. A survivor who happened to open his eyes breathing and living albeit on the island with not a single soul found. As though she didn’t know he had raised _the defences_ himself — seeking an opportunity to crawl into his shell securely, avoiding to provoke interrogation which would have undeniably followed.

 

Yet, she knew him well enough to sense that something has to be off, although he has learned this game of hide and seek very well throughout the years of total control and practically no personal space given without a prior verbal duel, a tiresome sparring with thorough argumentation as a major weapon of choice.

 

“By nine. Not a minute later. Else the supper would get cold. I’ll be waiting!”

“You shouldn’t see _that man_ …He is older and I don’t like the way he is eyeing you. Don’t call him anymore, do you hear me?!”

“I love you more than you can imagine, dear. You’ll understand once you’ll become a parent yourself, believe me!”

 

He knew why she did it, she only wished him well. She worried too much and he could pinpoint the slightest change of timbre or a neurotic note suddenly slipping into her velvety tone. She liked to ask questions, she always needed _to know_ : the way he felt and the thoughts in his head — to give a mortherly advice, to help him _despite_ the fact he never asked for her help, in the first place. Her gaze grew darker with concern and worry made her voice tremble a little; mouth a thin line and a silent reproach in a shrewd, intent look of her eyes.

 

— Here we go again... Why don’t you tell me where you’ve been for the last two hours and a half…You’ve been to the rink and then the taxi-driver should have taken you home…He waited for half an hour for you before calling me to tell about your disappearance. I thought I would go mad…You want to drive me crazy, don’t you?

 

— No, mom. I don’t.

 

His voice sounded smaller than he intended it to and he tried hard not to let chopsticks in his fingers shake as he was eating his ramen. He needed to end the supper as soon as possible.

 

— Hard practice… And then, the weather is so warm and cherry-trees are in full bloom. I thought I’ll just have a walk in the park near the river… Petals on the water are so beautiful.

 

Her facial expression was skeptical, manicured nails tapping on the table.

 

— Why didn’t you pick up the phone?

 

An accusatory tone is really hard to miss. He didn’t blame her in his turn. She just loved him a tad _too much_ , if that can be said about motherly type of love at all. It was not her fault after all that he had been reckless enough, that he had been spoiled to the point of losing his virginity to a man he barely knew on a warm spring evening. _He_ asked him out “for a walk” and he agreed knowing full well what exactly that entailed. He imagined her worried face when he turned on the silent mode in his phone. He heard her high-pitched voice in his head throwing at him endless accusations of misconduct, of being a bad (read: _ungrateful_ ) son, of wanting to rebel against her will and authority. And he did _rebel_ — to a degree he didn’t realize he had an audacity to.

 

— Listen, I am really tired tonight…Please, let us talk tomorrow morning.

 

She knitted her brow, protest ready to fall from her pursed lips when he got up abruptly (nearly knocking over a glass of orange juice) and kissed her stunned face: a chaste kiss on a forehead, a wordless plea to let him be for once. He craved privacy, needed to sort out of what he had become in the span of one evening, sensing a profound change which had occurred within him.  

  

 _And later,_  
_he wanders, worried,_  
_though seemingly calm and fit,_  
_and tells somebody:_  
_“Finally, nothing can_  
_frighten you,_  
_right?!”_  
_Listen!_  
_if the stars are lit,_  
_then someone must really need them?_

 

Looking into the mirror is way harder than before. He is staring at a different person now. His eyes are of no exception, there is no trace of childhood in the obsidian irises. _Innocence has fled_. He feels a lifetime older and as he lowers the high collar of his black turtleneck a telling purple hickey at the side of his slender neck is making him shudder involuntarily. He even had a crazy idea to change into a plain white t-shirt and come to supper dressed that way, showing _the mark_ off defiantly as a badge of honor. _Ruined honor._

 

“Look here, mom, your son is a big boy now.”

 

He didn’t do it of course. He was ready to bet she wouldn’t appreciate seeing this outrageous sign of his downfall, a blow that could shatter an image of a “perfect son to be proud of” in mere seconds. He has never meant to act cruelly or to rub it in her face; he just wanted to provide her with a glimpse of his _truer_ self, to make her see him as he is and not as she desires him to see — her own dreams and musings projected on the way he should behave and think, an ambitious project called _“ideal son”._

 

Taking off his clothes (dirt spotting his well-worn jeans along with some grass blades) he threw it in a messy pile beneath the bathtub without a second thought. The water was pleasantly warm, washing over his tense body in a platonic caress of invisible fingers, soothing. It smelled of may-lily faintly, his favorite bubble bath flavor; _a delicate flower with pure whitey petals that grows in the woodland shadow._ Breathing in deeply he let water engulf his shoulders, neck and face, separating him from the surrounding reality. Oxygen deprivation was tearing at his lungs and he couldn’t stay underwater like that for too long, mindlessly hiding beneath its surface, with a heartbeat pounding in his eardrums deafeningly.

 

 _He was_ _drowning_ in his reminiscences instead, his body remembering everything: the pain of initial penetration, hard thrusts of muscled hips, strong hands buried in strands of his moist hair, the way he thought he would suffocate, his cries muffled into the skin of a sweaty neck; his orgasm exploded behind closed eyelids, a nearly out-of-body experience as he seemed to be watching somewhere from above as his own self was pressed brutally into the ground, cherry branches framing the blurring picture of two obscenely entwined half-naked bodies.

 

He was sore still.

 

— I’ll take you home, Yuzu-kun.

 

Awkward pause suspended heavily between them.

 

— No, there’s no need.

 

— _Take care then_ … See you later, I guess.

 

A tentative touch of chapped lips to his forehead to seal the ending of their rushed encounter.

 

Coming to the surface again, he was gasping for air desperately. The quietude of the bathroom was seeping through his skin, numbing his senses. He tiptoed to his bedroom, his father’s voice adding to that of his mother in their casual evening kitchen talk. Everything felt _deceptively_ the same yet irreversibly different: the dull ache in his muscles, the gaping void in his soul.

 

The bedsheets wrapped him in coldness and the darkness of his small room evoked claustrophobic feeling of hopelessness, a crushing realization of something important lost forever. He bit his lower lip, willing his racing heart to calm down. He was startled by the sound of incoming messages, phone screen blinking on the bedside table two times. The first one said: “Pick up the damned phone, Yuzu”; the second contained only one word repeated thrice — a desperate and glaring plea for mercy: “ _please please please_ ”.   

 

He did pick up. In a minute or two: ragged breathing and a husky voice that sent shivers down his spine right in his ear, greeting him on the other end of the phone line.   

 

— I’ve been thinking of you _non-stop_ since we parted, you know… It feels so strange…I just wanted to say that I don’t regret anything. I hope you don’t either…Care to know what exactly I would like to do to you _next time_?

 

Yuzuru’s subsequent prolonged silence was taken as a sign of affirmation.

 

— I’d open you up with my tongue. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Tell me, Yuzu.

 

Yuzuru swallowed nervously, toes curling into the futon. He hung up immediately, not wanting to hear _that voice_ a moment longer, despising the effect it had on his body, his skin tingling form a wave of stinging arousal.

 

Not now. Later. Maybe.

 

Sleep crawled stealthily, his leaden limbs aching for a much needed rest as Morpheus finally took him in his arms. He dreamed of cherry petals dancing in the wind that night, of their feathery touch ghosting over his face and lips, of them covering his dark hair akin to tiny snowflakes, innocent and chaste…  

 

_if the stars are lit,  
then someone must need them_

 

Yuzuru knew his star is destined to be lit one day and then perhaps he will be needed — by someone, by everyone… just the way he is.  

 

**


End file.
